Political Quotes

“with the Congress focused on the U.S.-Iran nuclear agreement, it is not surprising that recent developments in Guatemala have not received the attention they deserve, either here or in the international press. I want to speak briefly about this as it should interest all Senators, particularly at a time when the governments of Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras are seeking significant U.S. funding to support the Plan of the Alliance for Prosperity in the Northern Triangle of Central America. The Cold War history of U.S. involvement in Guatemala is not one we can be overly proud of. The role of the United Fruit Company, the CIA, Guatemala's landholding elite, and others in orchestrating the removal of democratically elected President Jacobo Arbenz Guzman in 1954, the training and equipping of the Guatemalan military that carried out a scorched earth campaign against a rebel insurgency and the rural indigenous population in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, and policies favoring the financial and political elite who perpetuated the racism, social and economic inequities, corruption, violence, and impunity that persist to this day, are all part of that collective experience. One of the vestiges of that period is the continuing harassment, vilification, death threats, and even malicious prosecutions of human rights defenders and other social activists.…”